His lips twitched. "And yet here I am, proving the idle tongues wrong once again."
"I did not say you were the disappointment, merely that your presence was unexpected. Like discovering a spider in one's slipper. Startling, but ultimately insignificant."
"A spider." He pressed a hand to his chest in mock offense. "You wound me, Lady Vanessa. And here I had come specifically to request a dance."
Her heart performed an extremely inconvenient maneuver but she ignored it. "How unfortunate. My card is quite full."
"Is it?" He reached out and plucked the dance card from where it hung at her wrist, examining it with exaggerated interest. "Curious. It appears rather empty to me. Unless you are saving space for Lord Haberton? I marked the way he devoured you with his eyes. One might mistake it for the purest affection …or merely his next delectable morsel is a matter of some debate.”
No sooner had he spoken those words , he produced a small lead pencil from somewhere inside hi coat, ofcoursehe carried a pencil, the presumptuous creature that he was and scrawled his name across one of the lines.
"There. The supper waltz. I shall look forward to it immensely."
"I did not agree to dance with you."
"No," he said, returning the card with a smile that made her want to commit violence. "But you will. You always do."
It was the pinnacle of her mortification realising that, despite his audacity, he had perceived the reality of her heart with absolute precision.
Shedidalways dance with him, had done so at every ball where their paths crossed for the past four Seasons. She told herself it was because refusing would cause a scene. Because he was Edward's closest friend and it would be rude. Because dancing with him meant nothing, less than nothing, a mere social obligation to be endured and forgotten.
She told herself many things and very few of them were true.
"If you will excuse me," she said stiffly, "I believe I see someone I must speak with."
"By all means." He stepped aside with an elegant bow that somehow managed to convey both perfect courtesy and utter insolence. "Until the supper waltz, little Wayworth."
She swept past him without another word, her cheeks burning, her pulse doing something deeply irritating in her throat. Behind her, she could hear him greeting her mother with renewed charm, saying something that made Lady Wayworth laugh again.
Insufferable…the man was completely and utterly insufferable.
She found refuge near a potted palm, which offered the dual advantages of partial concealment and proximity to a servant carrying champagne. She claimed a glass with rather more enthusiasm than was strictly ladylike and took a fortifying sip.
"Vanessa? Are you quite all right? You look rather flushed."
Her friend Miss Helena Crawford appeared at her elbow, pretty and blonde and wearing an expression of gentle concern. Helena was everything Vanessa was not; soft-spoken, agreeable, the sort of young woman who inspired protective instincts in gentlemen rather than the urge to argue.
"I am perfectly well," Vanessa said. "I have merely had the misfortune of encountering the Duke of Montehood."
"Ah." Helena's concern transformed into something rather more knowing. "I see."
"There is nothing to see. The man is a plague upon polite society. He is arrogant, presumptuous, and entirely too convinced of his own charm."
"He is also extraordinarily handsome."
"That is beside the point."
"Is it?" Helena took a delicate sip of her own champagne. "I only mention it because you are gripping your glass rather tightly, and I should hate to see you shatter it. The scandal would be tremendous."
Vanessa forced her fingers to relax. "He signed my dance card…without permission. He simply took it from my wrist and wrote his name as though he had every right in the world."
"How dreadful," Helena murmured, in the tone of someone who did not find it dreadful at all. "The supper waltz, I presume?"
"How did you know?"
"Because it is the most intimate dance of the evening, and if I were a devastatingly handsome duke attempting to torment a young lady I had known since she was sixteen, which is precisely the dance I would claim."
"He is not attempting to torment me. He does not think of me at all. I am merely Edward's little sister, a mild amusement at best, an inconvenience at worst." The words tasted bitter on her tongue, more bitterly than she had intended. She took another sip of champagne to wash them away.
